Book of Changes - Very Good, Based on 3 Critics

AllMusic - 80Based on rating 8/10

80

Book of Changes is singer, songwriter, and notably impassioned performer Guy Blakeslee's first full-length album back under his solo moniker, Entrance. It follows a decade of leading his trio, the Entrance Band. The EP Promises, released just five months prior, teased a sound with a singer/songwriter-type character much more so than the fierce psych-rock of his group.

Guy Blakeslee's career has drawn no straight stylistic lines. After breaking from the knotty psych rock of his Baltimore band the Convocation Of… in 2002, Blakeslee reemerged in the early '00s with a series of warped records and a new identity: a haunted Delta blues conjurer called Entrance. In the years since, he staggered and sometimes stumbled through brooding stoner rock with the Entrance Band and, more recently, alternated phases of anemic indie and instrumental escapism under his given name.

It’s been a decade since Guy Blakeslee issued a recording under the Entrance moniker, a span that would have, in previous times, seemed an eternity. You can't hear the intervening years as you wind your way through these tracks, but you can hear occasional traces of Phil Spector's Wall of Sound, psychedelic pop, the spirit of Lee Hazelwood and others who have paved the way with masterfully rendered songwriting. That's not always a good thing.